AIBU to ask how much your husbands contribute to household bills?

[Sugarplum5]

To ask how much your husbands pay into the family home? Does he expect you to pay half the bills, does he pay them all etc?

One joint account, everything goes into that.
We each buy what we want, when we want.

Inheritance/Bonuses/Windfalls are all shared no matter where they came from or who earned them.

Tell him you want to open a joint account and have both salaries going in there to make things easier. What’s his reaction?

We view 'fair' differently, I guess. We've been married a long time. Things weren't as they are now, I don't think, and I'm grateful.

He brings home £4.5k net/month and I bring £3.2k. All goes in joint account for spending and savings. From that we have £500 each to our personal accounts.

There’s been times when I’ve been the main earner with 4x his salary and he was part-time and doing more childcare and we had 3 years when I didn’t work at all and we managed from the joint account with less savings and less personal (but still equal) spends. When I was in mat leave he cashed in an ISA he’d had from before we met to offset my reduction in income and maintain our lifestyle

Essentially: all money is family money. We each work hard contributing to our family and we share the domestic load equally too.

We both pay a set amount/ proportion of our salary into the joint account for bills/ anything our child needs/ general spending and saving for hols/ household stuff etc.

The rest in our own accounts to do what we choose with. Though often ends up being joint anyway eg put towards work on the house or a bigger holiday etc.

Not married, I am the higher earner, pay 60/40 into a bills account monthly which covers bills and childcare and slowly builds up an emergency reserve.

I pay for larger food shops, pretty much all ad-hoc expenses (clothes, shoes, household etc…) and 90% of our leisure activities and meals out. Would be nice to share the load a bit more but we are where we are and content for the most part.

We rent, yes both names

We both put into joint account an amount that leaves us each with about £400. So he puts in about £3.6k and I put in about £2.5k

All bills and savings are serviced from this.

The £400 each is for us to spend as we please.

This would be fine if I earned more too.

Everything in one joint account.

Mine always earned a bit more than me. We have never had a joint account but he paid for more which evened it out. But due to our finances being very healthy as we have always had a higher than average income we have never had any arguments about money and no money worries at all.

How much of the housework and child care does he do?

He pays mortgage, electricity, water, waste collection, Internet though if he has less money one month (he doesn't work full time any more) I help out. I pay food, kids extra curriculars and medical bills, and most of their clothes. Any extra bills that come up whoever has more money left pays.

All in together. We have the same fun money which for him mostly covers tech and for me coffee out and dresses (not must cover my body need something dress, but those I’d spend more than is technically reasonable 😂)

Sounds like you are subsidising him.

Write a list of all the monthly bills (estimating on food etc). This will help you work out how much he needs to contribute to running the household.

It’s up to you both whether you go down the joint account route, but it works for many couples.

We have a joint account that all joint/household come out of. Then we have our own accounts as well. DH earns more than me so he puts more into the joint account - we are both left with roughly the same amount of ‘personal’ money a month.

We have a joint account into which we both put the same amount each month. Out of that comes bills, electricity, council tax etc. We each have our own accounts for anything we want to buy, and we go halves on holidays, big purchases like a car, and so on.

Have you worked out how much you're paying and how much he is paying? We have no way of knowing whether it's fair or not because you're telling us about things rather than money. For example, you said you pay for gas/electric but he pays for holidays and takeaways. If he's spending thousands on holidays and takeaways then you have got a good deal.

You should be putting equal amounts into one pot to cover all bills and shared expenses. That ensures it's equal and fair.

Everything in one pot. I've worked full-time, part-time and not at all and he's never cared.

Everything has always been pooled, he had more income I had more assets. I stopped working when we had DC but will have more lump sums coming in. All of it is shared. I would do the same if I had been the higher earner. We don’t have a fixed spend allocation either, we use what we want but we are both sensible, anything over £200 we will discuss as a curtesy but neither of us has ever said no to anything and we are on the same page in terms of what reasonable purchases are.

Joint account for bills. He occasionally has to top it up which he does as will I.

He pays 60% to all joint bills and costs. He also tends to pick up the cost of tradesmen for smaller jobs around the house, if we get someone in. That’s in line with the proportion of the total household income.

We have a joint account into which we pay a fixed amount - him 60% of it, me 40% - which covers all joint bills and costs (like food), plus a small extra amount to build up a buffer. The rest of our income we keep for ourselves in our own accounts.

Is this supposed to be sarcastic?

DH pays all household bills and mortgage, pay food shopping. We both run a business so we’re both generating the income. However I take less out the pot for a wage.

All the money in one pot, bills paid first, discussions re what happens to the rest.

I honestly don't know how you do it dufferently in a marriage. If you can't manage that fairly between you with each having the other's interests at heart, why are you married?

As a pp said all money is pooled. He earns about 10% more than me though, so technically he pays 10% more than me! Also, I spend more than him!